Twinner, the French buying and franchising group formerly known as Technicien du Sport, obtained court approval in Grenoble on March 4 to close down and liquidate its purchasing company, SED, which had debts of €3 million, including €1.2 million in social security fees owed to the state and €800,000 worth of VAT payments. It did so after buying back the 49 percent stake held in the company by Garant Schuh + Mode, the German-based buying group that recently came out of insolvency.

Twinner has also decided to use the well-oiled apparatus of Intersport France to handle centralized invoicing and settlement on behalf of its affiliated retailers and their 200-odd sporting goods stores, starting from the second half of 2008. After using Garant and then Sport 2000 for this purpose, it hired last July the French subsidiary of the Fortis bank, but it did not work out because it had no experience in the sporting goods sector.

Since the middle of 2006, Twinner has been carrying out purchasing on behalf of its members through Intersport France, except for its private label items, benefiting from special conditions granted by the vendors. It had previously done joint purchasing with Sport 2000.

The members of Twinner, the majority of whom are located in alpine resorts, had total retail sales of about €150 million last year, compared with €1.05 billion for Intersport France. Some of its members have migrated to Intersport, while some Intersport members are considering the opening of Twinner shops to reinforce their presence in certain areas. A total of 10 new Twinner stores are in the pipeline for this year.

The French Intersport Group has reported a sales increase of 3.22 percent for its affiliated stores in France and Belgium to a total of €1,080 million in 2007, but the stores located in mountain resorts saw their turnover decline by 4.29 percent, despite the opening of 10 new doors. On a comparable store basis, their sales were off by 7.32 percent. Instead the Intersport stores located elsewhere did 7.42 percent better, with a 1.67 percent same-store gain.

Other banners run by the group saw their sales decrease by 23 percent, but Shooz, the brown shoe retailing brand of the group, went up by 4.5 percent on a comparable basis.

The stores affiiated with Intersport in Belgium increased their sales by 2.98 percent on a comparable basis, reaching a turnover of €34.8 million.